Category Archives: Personal Updates

It’s my own worst enemy

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Editor’s Note – As part of my work with The Artist’s Way I am occasionally required to complete certain assignments that are intended to help me discover the things that have me “blocked” as an artist.  Unlike the daily exercise of completing 3 pages of long hand in a journal these stories do not, necessarily, have to be private.  As such I figured that since I was writing this anyway I’d go ahead and put some actual content in this journal for a change instead of letting it fester here unused.  Please understand, though, that what I am writing is not necessarily going to be a rational take on my experiences or any kind of plea for help.  On the contrary, these entries are actually part of a conscious effort to improve myself and my self-worth.

I have been asked to describe one of the “monsters” from my past that has held me back as an artist.  I really had to think hard about this because, frankly, I’ve had more support than not in my quest to be an artist. After thinking about it for a while I did manage to come up with my three, and here are the details on one of them…

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And now you’re older still…

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So.  Yeah.  I’m 37 now.  One step closer to that magically delicious number of 40.

It was a damned good birthday.  Krystalle took me out to eat at Ted Peters Smoked Fish, a St. Petersburg institution that I thought I had never been to.  I’m not so sure of that anymore.  While I was eating the fish spread, in particular, kept making me think of my Grandpa Andres.  I didn’t have any actual memories of going there with him, but I know for a fact that he loved the restaurant.  When I called my Mother to ask if he had ever taken me there as a child she said it was certainly possible, so I think he may very well have done so.  Of course thinking of that set me on a trip down memory lane remembering the places here in St. Pete that mean something to me.  While we were eating at Ted Peters we were sitting almost directly across the street from Ten Pin Lanes – one of the places my Great Grandparents used to go bowling on a regular basis.  On the drive home we passed the church where I went to Boy Scouts and the high school my sister went to.  We passed by the nursing home where my Grandmother died and the Taco Bell we used to go to on Tuesday nights when we were dancing at Bennigan’s After Dark.  We passed the Middle School I went to where I really started to feel a passion for theater and the youth center I was sent to during the summer as a child where I learned lots of things about life that I’m not entirely sure my Mother sent me there to learn.

All these memories in the course of a 5 mile drive.

I do love this town.  If for no other reason than for the fact that I can go almost anywhere here and remember something that can put a smile on my face.

My evening was taken up by yet another performance of Night of the Living Dead, but it was pleasantly accompanied by some Pumpkin Ginger Cupcakes that Katrina made for me that were absolutely amazing.  I had four of them.  Maybe five?  I don’t remember and I don’t care.  They were my birthday present and between those cupcakes and lunch at Ted Peters I still probably took in fewer calories than I would have had I done the annual trip to Crazy Buffet.  After the show we stopped by Four Green Fields and I accepted one of the drinks that were offered to me as a birthday present (I kinda had to drive home and had the boy with me.  Not really a recipe for getting tipsy, yanno?).

Life is good.  I am happy and surrounded by amazing people.  You couldn’t really ask for much more on a bithday.

Yet another Health Insurance Reform factoid

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There are four of us on my insurance policy.  It’s a good insurance policy, by all accounts.  It’s certainly much better than not having insurance.  Most of the time, anyway.

This whole H1N1 scare, though?  If you’re following all of the CDC best practice guidelines if you think you’re exposed you should go immediately to a clinic and be tested and start on Tamiflu.

The Urgent Care clinic co-pay on our plan is $50.

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The more things change…

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So I’ve made another shift on the old blog here.  I have moved away from WordPress.com and set up a hosting account with HostGator.  WordPress.com is a great value, but the limited amount of stuff that you can do with your site there really got on my nerves.  HostGator is, quite frankly, a stunningly good deal.  $9.95 a month gets me unlimited disk space, bandwidth, databases, and domains.  I could theoretically move all of my domains to the one account and give them completely different sites with the same monthly fee.  It’s kinda crazy.  I’m probably going to end up moving ShrinkGeek here, too.  I just need to figure out what to do with the ColdFusion application we’re using on the back end.

For those of you following my RSS feeds, this now means that I can start using the <More> tag again and my epic length posts won’t clog up your feeds.

You’re welcome!

Yup. Still alive.

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Yeah, August was insane.  This is the first weekend in a long time that I’ve been able to pretty much just chill out at home and not do much of anything.  Unfortunately, for some reason, I had a monkey wrench thrown in that last night with a bout of nausea that turned into vomiting.  I have NO idea what happened there.  The only thing I can think is that I ate a few Weight Watchers quesadilla’s after doing a 50 minute workout with EA SPORTS Active.  Regardless of why I got ill, a few hours after I was sick I felt fine and seem to be peachy keen again today.

Ok, yeah.  I started this post talking about puke.  Where the hell do I go from here?

We’ve wrapped up another Dragon*Con, and all told I think it was a pretty smashing success.  We have some thing we want to improve on for next year for sure, but considering the monumental task we attempted to achieve I feel good about the work we did.  On my day off I hit the dealer rooms and picked up some new snarky shirts.  I also got my kilt belt re-sized (That was a nice ego boost in and of itself.  The leather worker took a big chunk off of the belt to make it fit properly).  I saw some good friends, had a chance to see the William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy panel, and I got to hang out for a few minutes with Felicia Day backstage before her panel on Monday morning (and yes, if you’re wondering, she’s just as nice and funny as you’d expect her to be).

On the weight front I had the satisfaction of knowing that when I left for the convention I was two pounds less than I was when I went to my first one back in 2002.   I noticed a few ladies giving me the once over, and had one woman make what was (to Krystalle) a very obvious pass at me.  Me?  I continue my long-standing tradition of being fairly clueless in that regard and thought she was just being funny when she told me I should find someone to cover for my shift so I could come over to the Marriott at midnight to “get blown.”  She was referring to Jennie Breeden’s annual kilt-blowing get together, but the directness and the way she said it apparently meant more.

I have to be told these things, you see.

Speaking of kilts – I wore my utilikilt the entire weekend, mostly because a) it makes me look good and b) it is probably going to be the last year I’m able to wear this particular kilt.  It’s getting very loose at this point.  Before I had my belt re-sized on Friday I thought it might actually fall off.  Mind you, I’m not complaining about the fact that I’m losing weight at all.  Utilikilts are expensive, though!

In other health related news I have purchased a shiny new pair of running shoes with gift cards I got through the Virgin Healthmiles program and tomorrow I’m going to start training to run a 5k.  Like pull ups, running is something that my weight has always thrown up a barrier to, and it is time I knocked that barrier down.  The 5k I have picked out takes place about 2 weeks after my 37th birthday, and I think that would be a delightful way to ring in the start of my next trip around the sun.

Can’t really say I have much more interesting to say at the moment.  Alex and I have started rehearsals for Night of the Living Dead.  I’m playing the free to play Dungeons and Dragons Online as well as Kingdom of Loathing.  Now that convention season is done sticking our heads back in the sand financially and working on paying down some more debt.  I still have my job, and while our company is doing everything they can to cut costs we’re still not cutting benefits or employees.  All in all, life is still pretty good on my end.

Exciting?  Maybe not.  But adventure?  Excitement?  A Jedi seeks not these things.

And on that extremely nerdy note I bid you adieu.

*tap* Is this thing on?

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Ok.  Yes.  I suck at updating.  I’ve gotten used to doing all my updates in 140 characters or less over the course of my day and have spent all of my verbose writing energy over at ShrinkGeek.  You caught me.  I’m a horrible person and it’s perfectly justifiable that the number of people who visit my site every day has dropped to about 6.

I fail at internet celebrity.  Seriously.

I could say that my life has been exceedingly busy lately and I wouldn’t be lying, but I’ve used that excuse before and promised that I would change.  I mean it this time, though, baby.  Come back to me.  It’s going to be different.  I love you more than I love that silly old Twitter business.  She means nothing to me.  All I give her is a bunch of cheap, quick hits.  You?  You get all the depth and breadth of my soul.  My innermost feelings.  The very essence of what it is to be ME.

Just ignore all those workout posts.  I was going through a phase.

Umm…Did I just anthropomorphize my blog?

Is that even a word?

So anyway.  Updates.  Right.

Got back in town on Sunday from the (now) annual excursion to Indianapolis to attend GenCon with Alex.  We has an absolute blast.  The highlight of the con was our participation in the NASCRAG tournament, and I’m proud to say that our team managed to snag both the best name category (“We Have 3 Virgin Men”) and Third Place overall.  Not only that, but Trish took home the prize for MVP in her portrayal of Sexy Kobold Left…or was it Sexy Kobold Right?  It was really hard to tell.  For those of you who are too lazy to click the link, NASCRAG is an annual role-playing tournament at GenCon in which rules take a back seat to having fun.  The focus isn’t on who knows the game mechanics but more on who plays their character the best and puzzle solving.  We had so much fun we’ve already determined that NASCRAG is a definite for next year already and our team is already starting to form.  We also managed to snag a few spots in a Second Edition Paranoia game loosely based on the Star Trek universe called Paranoia Trek (a GenCon tradition, apparently).  I managed to win a prize for role-playing in that one for my stunningly accurate portrayal of Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway.  I’m not entirely sure if I should be proud of that one.  We continued the silliness in a rousing game of Luchador : Way of the Mask, and Alex enjoyed that one so much he actually purchased a copy for himself and wants to run it at some point.  Finally we got to try out the latest edition of Call of Cthulhu in a scenario known as “Beatings :  The Musical” (which was, apparently, the censored title….the original title was “Buggery Hoedown on the Gaza Strip.”).  That was a very entertaining mix of the silliness we’d been participating in all weekend with some good old fashioned Cthulhu chills.  Yes, we died at the end of the adventure.  But, hey!  We did NOT go insane AND we managed to prevent the world from being destroyed for another 100 years or so.  Go team!

Negatives of the con?  I attempted to pick up a copy of Call of Cthulhu along with a few GURPS supplements from Atlas Games and had the very embarrassing experience of discovering the Chase had decided to cancel the credit card that I took along for goodie purchases the night before (after I had used it to pay for dinner).  This is not the first time the Chase has screwed me over, but it was the worst and will be the last.  I have one card left with them that has a zero balance, and as soon as I’m able to make sure I have another “emergency” card on hand to take its place I’m canceling that one.  We also had a lovely experience with Alex’s blood sugar on Sunday morning due to the fact that he ran out of one of his types of insulin and didn’t tell me about it because he thought I’d be mad or something.  He had high levels of keytones in his blood and was vomiting before we got on the plane to come home.  I was able to get his blood sugar down to a reasonable level with what we had on hand and we made it home without incident, but it was a real pisser of a way to end the vacation.  It was also another reminder that he is not completely mature enough yet to handle his blood sugar related issues without being monitored closely.  I know he hates that, but until he proves we don’t need to anymore it is how things have to be.  There was also a snafu with the hotel bill that caused my bank account to be overdrafted, but that managed to get fixed and I’m being sent a coupon for a suite upgrade for next year.

Overall, though, it was a fantastic time and as usual I have come home with a renewed desire to get together with the family and friends to do some more table top gaming.  I have also walked away from the weekend finally able to see a picture that has been forming in my head ever since I made a concerted effort to actually read the Fourth Edition Dungeon Masters Guide from cover-to-cover.

One of the things they pointed out in that book is that a good Game Master never says “No.”  On the surface that seems like a truly disastrous statement to make, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that it was a completely true statement.  The fact of the matter is that in many ways a role-playing game is just an improvisational theater game.  You have a set of rules, you have an established character, and you have one person setting up the scenarios you will encounter who has an outcome in mind.  The fun comes in the getting there, and as part of that the players are just as important to telling the story as the game master.  Accepting that an RPG is a form of improv theater it makes sense that the “never say No” rule of improv carries over to table top gaming.  This is not to say that you let your players get away with completely running over your story, but it’s imperative that you let them actually take part in shaping it.  The best game masters I’ve ever played with did this, and I saw many fine examples of it this previous weekend as well.

I am inspired to do the same.

On another acting note we’re still in the midst of casting the 2010-2011 Jobsite Season with all the angst and anxiety that goes along with it.  I have at least one more show to audition for on August 31st and I’m still waiting to hear about another one.  I have already landed a few roles and gotten very close on a few others (including one that, unfortunately, I REALLY wanted…and not just because I could use the extra paycheck).  I am thinking that, next year, I need to at least go to the Tampa Area Unified Auditions at the Gorilla Theater.  Jobsite has been my theatrical home for the last 7 years and as far as I’m concerned they will have my eternal loyalty but I wonder sometimes if I’m doing myself a disservice by not at least seeing if anyone else would like to use me.

I was, however, reminded of something yesterday by a fellow actor and parent.  Every role that I miss out on is one more opportunity to spend time with my son before he’s grown up and out of my house.  I have plenty of time in my life to act after he is gone, but I will never get these years back.  The role I was gunning for hard this year would have prevented me from going to GenCon with Alex in 2010, and while I was prepared to make that particular sacrifice I think in the long run the time Alex and I spend together will be a much better investment.

Brain Dump

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I started writing this post a few days ago.  I figure I’ll just go ahead and append on the end of it with the understanding that, perhaps, my head space is a bit different than it was when I first began this ramble.

Not only do I feel the need to break up the utter and complete monotony of posting nothing but my workouts here, I also have a compulsion to simply talk about a few things.  Get some stuff out of my head and out there in the ether as it were.  As a result this may end up being an incoherent post at times, so I apologize in advance.

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A summary of my strengths

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As supplied by the folks over at Gallup…

Instinctively, you understand the utility that technology can bring to an organization and are always looking for the best equipment and the best ways to use that equipment.  In addition to your technical expertise, you possess social and emotional talents that are often rare in the information technology field.  Socially initiating and verstaile, your primary social instinct is to intentionally expand the breadth of your social network as you are comfortable and effective in meeting new people.  Possessing high levels of emotional intelligence, your empathy gives you a strong awareness of human emotions that helps you to understand the emotional implications of decisions and actions.  Your positivity contributes to your emotional intelligence as it enables you to be emotionally influential.  You have a  natural capacity for helping others to feel better.  While some might ignore or minimize the value of human emotion, your possess a holistic view of humans and a view of the world that places a high value on all human beings.

I’d be interested to hear how accurate you all feel that is.

Captain Kangaroo was a bloody genius

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I grew up watching Bob Keeshan play Captain Kangaroo. I don’t remember the show vividly to be completely honest. I believe I had moved on to bigger and better things by the time I started forming real memories. My memories of the show are more impressions than anything else. I found a quote from Keeshan this morning, though, that indicates he may have at least somewhat influenced the person who I became as an adult.

The responsibility of parents is to raise children who do not need parents.

When my son is an adult I want him to not need me anymore.  I want him to call me or shoot me an email every once in a while to let me know what is going on in his life, hell maybe even every day if he feels like it, but I want him to lead his life on his own.  I want him to face the challenges life throws at him on his own two feet, and when life knocks him on his ass I want him to get back up again on his own.  If he can’t I want him to know he can always call on me to help but I want that to be the aboslute last thing he would do – not the first.  Not because I will make him feel like shit about it, but becuase he doesn’t WANT to get help from anyone else to solve his problems.

I have, in the last few weeks, seen two very different examples of how bad it is for adults to rely on their parents to get them through life and I can’t have that for Alex.